Poisonal

ai
News Article
THE POISONALWILMINGTON · WEDNESDAY
News Article

Local Star Found To Be Ordinary

Astronomers confirm the sun is average and unbothered.

C8READ THE STORY
web
Search Query
📦Search Query
What the forums say tonight
The forums, live, where someone has already had this →
Fiction

The Repair

The last person in a small town who understands how anything works is dying, and the town must decide what to learn first

Open the book
Key takeaways
  • The last person in a small town who understands how anything works is dying, and the town must decide what to learn first
Key Point
The Key Point
Almost everything you own was made by people none of whom understood the whole thing.
The reasoning →
Playbook
Playbook

Tools For Thinking About Anything

Models practitioners reach for, with where they break.

OPEN THE PLAYBOOK
Translate This
TRANSLATE THISONE SENTENCE
Il n'y a pas de quoi.
French→English
Where Is It
WHERE IS ITEurope · DROP A PIN
Where is The Chernobyl exclusion zone?
Deepen
Deepen

How A Transistor Decides

One gate, two states, all of computing.

GO DEEPER
Code Block
payroll.cobCOBOL
Code
01 HIRE-DATE.
   05 HIRE-YY  PIC 99.   *> two digits is plenty
   05 HIRE-MM  PIC 99.
   05 HIRE-DD  PIC 99.
The entire Y2K problem: two digits where four were needed. The line a working programmer stops on is the comment, which says it was fine.
The whole record layout →
Related Concepts
runs onpart ofreplacesled toEnergyEnginesLabourToolsMachine
Explore the map
Pros & Cons
Pros & Cons · ONE NIGHT ONLY

Should Humans Have Invented Farming

Both sides at full strength, the reader scoring.

HEAR BOTH SIDES
Chess Board
The shortest possible checkmateBLACK TO MOVE
white rookwhite knightwhite bishopwhite kingwhite queenwhite bishopwhite knightwhite rookwhite pawnwhite pawnwhite pawnwhite pawnwhite pawnwhite pawnwhite pawnwhite pawnblack pawnblack pawnblack pawnblack pawnblack pawnblack pawnblack pawnblack pawnblack rookblack knightblack bishopblack kingblack queenblack bishopblack knightblack rook
The question
White has just played 2. g4. What does Black play?
Rank These
RANK THESE6 ITEMS
Rank these by how many people they killed in the twentieth century, most first
Scroll
factMarching soldiers have brought down bridges.
numberLiberty ships cracked in half at the dock.
questionWhy do old light bulbs outlast new ones?
factMarching soldiers have brought down bridges.
numberLiberty ships cracked in half at the dock.
questionWhy do old light bulbs outlast new ones?
scroll
no bottom
Timeline
📅Timeline
Fifty years from spark to socket
What happened
Faraday made current with a magnet in 1831; fifty years passed before Edison's Pearl Street station sold that current to a customer.
1831
1882
Walk the fifty years →9
How To
How To · FIG. 2

Fix A Thing Before Replacing It

Find the one part that failed and swap that.

SHOW ME HOW
Pronunciation
EN-GB
Worcestershire
A county, and a sauce
Three syllables, not five: WUSS-ter-sher
Prompt Sandbox
PROMPT
The task
Explain it to a bored twelve-year-old
Starter prompt
> You are explaining why the sea is salty to a twelve-year-old who has already said
Legal Guide
Delaware
Legal Guide

Can Your Landlord Enter Without Notice

Delaware rules, plain words, the concrete moves.

Not legal advice. The law where you live decides.
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS
web
Real Photo
Earthrise, Apollo 8, 24 December 1968
See it in full →
Newspaper
Vol. XCIV5¢

The Daily Everything

City EditionRain, Windy
By Our Own Correspondent

One day's edition of a newspaper that covers all of history as if it happened this morning

Open the book
The Daily Everything
  • One day's edition of a newspaper that covers all of history as if it happened this morning
Diagnose This
CASE FILE
DIAGNOSE THISONE CALL
Close it, restrict it, or leave it open with monitoring?
A bridge inspector finds hairline cracks at the welds on a forty-year-old steel girder bridge. Traffic has doubled since it was built. The cracks have not grown between the last two inspections, six months apart.
Workout Plan
Workout Plan

Stairs At Eighty

Four movements, one cue each, three days a week.

START WEEK 1
Personal Ad
MISSED CONNECTIONSC-59

YOU: dark matter, most of everything, never seen. ME: telescope, Chilean desert, 4 a.m., patient. Been looking 90 yrs. Would like to meet. Object only.

The whole notice →
Concept
Concept · Physics
Thermal motion
in the context of Heat
Every atom in a 'still' object is vibrating; temperature is only how hard.
Unpack it →
Music Notation
Interval, the augmented fourth, any key
What you're hearing
The tritone: the two notes a medieval choirmaster would not let you sing together, and the exact interval The Simpsons theme opens on.
Hear it →
Fiction
POISONAL PULP · 15135¢

The Last Person Who Knew

A town loses its one mechanic and has to learn.

Fiction
START READING
Data Table
How long the light took to reach you from the thing you are looking at
ObjectLight travel time
Moon1.3 seconds
Sun8 min 20 s
Neptuneabout 4 hours
Proxima Centauri4.2 years
Andromeda galaxy2.5 million years
Read across →12
Quiz
EXAMINATION BOOK
Quiz

Could You Pass Everything

Ten questions across all of human knowledge, ramped.

TAKE THE TEST
Try It Now
1MIN
Do this
Hold the back of a spoon against a thin stream from the tap and watch the water bend toward it instead of away
Chat
1 missed call
Voicemail
Walt, retired mechanic, has taken apart one of everything
mentor · just now
0:000:09
Transcription
“Hey, it's Walt. You said you wanted a bit about everything. Call me back and name any object in the room and I'll tell you what's inside it and which part goes first.”
Opening line
Right. What did you pick? Don't say phone, everyone says phone.
Open the conversation
Ai Image
generated
Prompt
“The night sky if Andromeda were bright enough to see with the naked eye: six full moons wide, hanging over the roofline.”
See it full →
Practice
Practice

Estimate Anything In Your Head

Fermi problems, scored, until guessing feels natural.

RUN THE DRILLS
Predict Then See
PREDICT, THEN SEESEALED
The setup
Two identical balls are released at the same instant from the same height. One is dropped straight down; the other is fired horizontally at fifty metres a second.
Your call
Which one hits the ground first?
Realtime Voice
A call with someone who did this for thirty years
You'll be talking to
A retired air-traffic controller who will talk you through a go-around as if you are the one flying.
Call the tower
Overheard
overheard
Two Plumbers Explain the Universe
Side AC-90
Question
?
Question
If every memory you have of last year were quietly replaced with an equally pleasant invented one, what exactly would you have lost?
Sit with it
Discover
Discover

Why The Night Is Dark

Infinite stars should make a bright sky, and do not.

EXPLAIN IT TO ME
Definition
everything
noun
Meaning
The set of things the speaker has heard of, plus a gesture at the rest.
The full entry →
Venn Diagram
Biology's definition problem
Is a virus alive?
Things that copy themselvesThings made of cellsSharedEverything we are sure is alive sits in the middle. A virus copies itself but has no cell, so it waits on the left edge, alone, and biologists have argued about it for a century.
See what falls in the gap →4
Conversation
7:36 PM
Conversation

Talk Me Through Electricity

Electricity is basically water in a pipe, right?

A dialogue where the wrong idea goes first.

JOIN IN
Glossary
A–ZEngineers' vocabulary, from aircraft to databases
fault tolerance
/rɪˈpɒst/
Definition
A system that keeps working after one part fails, which sounds like strength and is actually the admission that the part will fail.
The rest of the words →18
Book

A Little Bit About Everything, Properly

Twelve short chapters, one per thing humans have actually figured out, each ending where the arguments start

Open the book
Key takeaways
  • Twelve short chapters, one per thing humans have actually figured out, each ending where the arguments start
Matrix Display
Linear algebra, the rotation matrix at ninety degrees
0-110
What it does
Turns anything in the plane ninety degrees anticlockwise. Every game you have played with a spinning object does this thousands of times a second.
See it worked →
Reference
PN 830 .A3
Reference

Words Engineers Use For Failure

A glossary of euphemisms for things that broke.

see also: see also: insurance, hubris, duct tape
LOOK IT UP
Matching Game
Diseases, matched to the one thing that was missing · 8
Match these
CholeraScurvyRicketsBeriberi
To these
Vitamin B1Clean waterSunlightVitamin C
Play →
Versus
Cheetah vs. Pronghorn: the fastest animal alive loses any race longer than a few hundred metres
Cheetah
Winner
Pronghorn, on anything past a sprint
Pronghorn
See the full matchup →5
Case File
Case 673 · Restricted

The Hindenburg File

Thirty-six seconds of fire, four competing explanations, and the one the reader has to close

StatusClosed
PhotographNone on File
Open the book
The Hindenburg File
  • Thirty-six seconds of fire, four competing explanations, and the one the reader has to close
Sankey
SANKEY
Where the energy in a litre of petrol goes, tank to tyres
34 MJ
Recipe
FROM THE KITCHEN OF — the desk№ 27
Recipe

Bread With Nothing But Time

Flour, water, salt, and patience doing the kneading.

COOK IT
Element Card
18noble gas
Ar
Argon
39.948 · gas at room temperature
Why it's here
Nearly one percent of every breath, noticed by nobody until 1894
See it in full →
Q&A
Q&AASK THE DESK

Questions Nobody Asks Out Loud

Dear Desk, why does my fridge hum louder at night
— T.

The ones people type into a search box at night.

GET ANSWERS
Principle
Principle · Safety engineering
Rule

Complex systems run in degraded mode.

— Richard Cook, 'How Complex Systems Fail', 1998

See the reasoning →
Fable
The Ant Who Audited the Grasshopper
The ant kept receipts all summer, and when winter came she discovered nobody had ever told her what they were for.
Realtime Chat
A live conversation with someone who has read everything once
Opening line
Pick any object within arm's reach. I'll tell you the three things inside it that had to be invented first.
Text· Or ·voice— your call
Answer it →
Reading List
Reading List

Where To Start With Everything

Six books, sequenced, the famous one ruled on.

START HERE
Faq
Questions people actually type at two in the morning
Is it just me, or did everyone miss the day this was explained
Q.Why is the sky blue but the sunset red?
A.Same scattering, longer path. The blue got thrown out of the beam before it reached you.
Q.Why does hot water sometimes freeze faster than cold?
Q.Why do we have to sleep?
The rest of them →9 sources
Geometry
GEOMETRY3 · 4 · 5
The 3-4-5 triangle, how builders squared a corner before lasers
345
Nine plus sixteen is twenty-five; a rope with twelve knots makes a right angle anywhere
Field Journal
Field Notebook · Season VSpecimen No. 58

Notebook From A Year Of Noticing

Dated entries from someone who decided to look at ordinary objects until they stopped being ordinary

Open the book
Notebook From A Year Of Noticing
  • Dated entries from someone who decided to look at ordinary objects until they stopped being ordinary
web
Image Display
A grainy photograph of mostly dark space with faint coloured bands of scattered light; a single pale pixel sits inside one band.
Caption
Voyager 1, 1990, six billion kilometres out. Earth is the speck inside the brown band on the right; the band is sunlight bouncing around inside the camera.
Look at the dot →
Profile
S
Profile

The Scientist Who Liquefied Brains

neuroscientist; inventor of the brain soup method

She turned brains into soup to count them.

MEET THEM
Group Text
Group Text · 3 voices
MMD
Momyour father wants to know why the microwave clock is wrong again
Mebecause that clock counts mains cycles and the grid frequency drifts. tell him it's the power company
Momhe says that's what he said
Dad (landline)
Open the thread →17
Group Chat
Three trades arguing about what electricity actually is
AAA
From the chat
“Teacher: ...yes, it is water in a pipe, for about twenty minutes. Then no.”
Read the rest of the argument →
Games
Games

Spot The Fake Element

Real elements, invented ones, and a running score.

PLAY
Mental Model
Mental Model · Policy, engineering, and anyone inheriting a codebase
Chesterton's Fence

Before you remove a fence, find out why someone built it.

See it applied →6
Bullets
Outline
Everything, in four lines
  • ▸Matter: four forces, one you notice
  • ▸Life: chemistry that copies itself
  • and makes mistakes, usefully
  • ▸Minds: life that models life
  • ▸Machines: minds outsourcing the boring part
See the outline →
Essay
Essay

On Knowing A Little

The case for shallow knowledge, held widely.

READ IT
Fill The Blank
FILL THE BLANKS6 BLANKS
The water cycle, with the words taken out
Grocery List
Grocery List
The hardware store, third trip today
On the list
· the OTHER kind of washer
· patience (ask at counter)
9
See the whole list →
Satire Article
Culture

Area Man Learns A Little About Everything, Now Unbearable At Dinner

A 41-year-old claims adjuster in Wilmington completed a panoply on Tuesday and has since corrected his wife on tides, bread, and the Aztecs.

Read the article
Lesson Plan
Physics · Grade 7 · 40 min
Why the sky is blue, taught in forty minutes
ObjectiveStudents can explain why the daytime sky is blue and the sunset red using one idea: scattering.
  1. 5'Hook
  2. 5'The misconception, said out loud
  3. 15'Scattering, with the torch
  4. 10'Sunset
  5. 5'Exit ticket
clear glass · water · a drop of milk · torch
Lesson Plan
Lesson Plan
GR 7

Teaching Scattering With A Torch

Blue sky and red sunset from one glass of milky water.

TEACH IT
Nutrition Facts
Nutrition Facts
1 session (60 min), consumed standing in the kitchen
Decisions deferred14
Outrage38 g
Information retained0.4 g
Sleep, following night-45 min
Thumb travel1.2 km
Read the small print →
Op Ed
OPINION
Stop Giving the Wheel Credit for Roads
Marguerite Okonkwo-HaleHas pushed a wheelbarrow across a muddy field and has views
The argument
The wheel is the most overrated invention in history, and the proof is that most of the world got on fine without it for thousands of years.
Read the argument →
Editorial
— Editorial —

Give Soap The Nobel Prize

Hand-washing has saved more lives than any drug.

by THE DESK
HEAR THE ARGUMENT
Hot Take
Hot Take
Most of what you learned in school was true, and that is the problem: you stopped checking.
The argument →
Writing Prompt
Writing Prompt · An exercise in explaining15 minutes
Prompt

Describe the inside of your fridge to someone from 1850, without using a single word they would not know.

Start →
Color Palette
IBM PC, 1981. Four colours, and this was one of the two sets you got.
#000000#55FFFF#FF55FF#FFFFFF
CGA palette 1, high intensity
See it whole →
Overview
Overview

Everything, The Lay Of The Land

What it is, what it is made of, what people fight about.

THE LAY OF THE LAND
Sequence Game
ORDER THESE7 SLIPS
Put these inventions in the order they arrived
The can opener
12345
Recipe Card
Index card from a diner line cook
Boiled egg, the one a competent cook still ruins by starting in cold water
Ingredients
eggs, straight from the fridge
water, already at a rolling boil
a bowl of ice, no cheating
Here, take the card →7
Bracket
BRACKET16 ENTRANTS
The most important invention, decided by elimination
Code Task
CODE TASKPYTHON
Write a function that returns true if a year is a leap year, including the rule about centuries.
$
Cheat Sheet
Cheat Sheet

Everything On One Folded Page

everything is simpler than it looks and harder than it sounds

The one rule per field and its exception.

UNFOLD IT
Quiz Tf
Said with confidence on every cathedral tour · 10
Statement
Glass is a very slow liquid, which is why old window panes are thicker at the bottom.
TrueFalse
True or false, no hedging →
Master
Master

The Open Problems In Sleep

Every animal does it and nobody knows why.

TAKE ME ALL THE WAY
Budget Allocator
BUDGETSPLIT IT
Split one day of your attention between the things that actually took it
24 hours
Countdown Timer
Static apnea, oxygen-assisted record 24:37
Task
Hold your breath. This is one tenth of the world record.
02min
:
28sec
Etymology
ETYMOLOGY4 STAGES
salary
  1. sal Latin · salt
  2. ↓ salarium Latin · a soldier's allowance, by tradition for salt
  3. ↓ salaire Old French · wages
  4. ↓ salary English · fixed pay
The salt story is probably folk etymology; the Romans themselves were not sure
Scenario
Scenario

You Are The Engineer On Duty

The dam gauge is climbing and the phone is ringing.

TAKE THE SEAT
When Was It
WHEN WAS ITDRAG THE MARKER
The invention of the can opener
Gallery
GALLERY8 PHOTOS
Machines that were the future, photographed the year they were
Network
NETWORK14 NODES
What had to exist before the smartphone
HUB · Lithium-ion battery
Piano Keys
C major to C minor
What you're playing
C major, three white keys, no thinking. Now move the middle finger one key left and feel the whole room change its mind.
Play both →
Walkthrough
Walkthrough

Proving There Is No Largest Prime

Euclid's argument, every step, the trap step slowed.

WATCH IT DONE
Hotspot
HOTSPOTTAP THE PART
Find the part of the engine that is on fire during normal operation
Movement Card
Dead hang
Sets3
HOLD30SEC
The cueShoulders down, away from the ears; let the spine lengthen
Buyer's Guide
Buyer's GuideREPORT TR-5081

Which Encyclopedia Should You Trust

Verdict first, criteria declared, somebody loses.

  • Wikipedia vs. Britannica vs. asking a machine
TESTED BY THE DESK
SEE THE VERDICT
Formula
The rocket equation, Tsiolkovsky, 1903
Δv=veln⁡m0mf\Delta v = v_e \ln\frac{m_0}{m_f}
Where
Δv = how much you can change your speed · v_e = how fast the exhaust leaves · m_0 = mass at launch, fuel included · m_f = mass when the tank is empty
Why fuel to carry fuel eats the rocket →
Wanted Poster
WANTED
REWARD · A working perpetual motion machine, if you can bring one in
FOR Making everything worse, slowly, without exception
The Second Law of Thermodynamics
LAST SEEN: Everywhere, always, most recently in your coffee
Book

The twelve cranial nerves

Flip the deck
Key takeaways
Travel Guide
Travel GuideBOARDING PASS

Where To Stand To See History

Real places where everything changed, with directions.

PLAN THE TRIP
Spot The Error
SPOT THE ERRORproof
Five steps of a proof that one equals two. One of them is illegal.
Corporate Memo
Hallam & Voss Consulting
RE: Retirement of the word 'synergy', effective Q3, pending alignment
Body
Following a review of outcomes, the term will be withdrawn from all decks. Teams are asked to leverage alternative language that captures the same cross-functional value.
Read the full memo →
Self Assessment
SELF-ASSESSMENT10 QUESTIONS
How much of what you 'know' you have ever checked
“When I repeat a fact, I can name where I first heard it.”
neveralways
Custom Html
< / >
Powers of ten, on a slider
interactive widget
Slide from a quark to the galaxy →
Lesson
Lesson

Entropy In Five Small Steps

subject: A check after each step, the misconception where it lives.
START THE LESSON
Checklist Progress
Pre-flight, Cessna 172, N-number on the wing
Steps
✓Fuel sumps drained, checked for water
✓Control lock out, stowed in the door pocket
Pitot cover off
Walk-around, both wings, both sides, every hinge
The rest of the walk-around →
Decision Walk
DECISION WALK5 ENDINGS
The smoke alarm goes off at three in the morning and you smell nothing. Do you get up?
Medical Guide
⚠ Worst headache of your life, arriving in seconds: stop reading and call.
Medical Guide

When A Headache Is Not Just A Headache

Red flags first, then the ordinary kinds.

DECODE YOURS
Pros Cons
Fire, domesticated
+ Pros
Cooked food, which let the gut shrink and the brain grow
Light after dark
Predators keep their distance
− Cons
Everything you own can now burn
Smoke in the lungs, every evening, for four hundred thousand years
Someone has to stay up and watch it
Weigh the rest →
Fun Fact
Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire. Teaching was under way at Oxford by 1096; Tenochtitlan was founded in 1325.
See it in full →
Tip
✦Tip
When a cheap thing breaks, search the model number plus 'teardown' before 'replacement'. Half the time it is one blown capacitor someone has already photographed.
The rest of the repair habit →
History
ADMIT ONE
History

How Time Became The Same Everywhere

Railways killed local noon in a single decade.

START AT THE BEGINNING
Process Flow
Making magnet wire
12345
Summary
Ore to ingot to wire to coil; the outcome is decided at the anneal, where skipped heat leaves copper that cracks on the first bend.
Walk the line →6
Advice Column
Domestic engineering disputes
Dear Load-Bearing
The letter
My partner says the dishwasher must be loaded 'logically' and that his way is the logical way. I have a physics degree. He has a strong jaw. How do I win this without ending the marriage?
Spray Arm Blocked, Toledo
Read the reply →
Worked Example
Worked Example · A Fermi estimate, the kind physicists do on napkins
Problem

A 70 kg person falls from a 10 m bridge into a lake the size of a football pitch and 2 m deep. Estimate how much the lake warms up, assuming all the energy ends as heat.

Watch it worked →5
Case Report
E
FILE № 4130-2860
Case Report

Who Cracked The Liberty Ships

Steel that failed in cold harbours, not at sea.

OPEN THE FILE
Email Chain
Re: Re: Re: Re: FW: Quick question about the bridge
From Dale (structural, retiring Friday)
Latest message
I think we're all agreed then, except on which bridge, which I had assumed was
Read the thread →23
Scorecard
JUDGE'S CARD
Fire vs. The Wheel
Fire
VS
The Wheel
Earliest use
Works without infrastructure
Deaths caused
Still in use
Quiz Mc
Kitchen physics · 8
Question
A litre of water, a litre of ice, a litre of steam at the boil. Which one weighs the most?
The litre of water
The litre of ice
The litre of steam
All the same, it is all water
Go on, pick one →
Diff Viewer
sm_forces.c· 2 changes
-impulse = thrust_lbf * dt; /* lbf-s */
+impulse = thrust_lbf * 4.44822 * dt; /* N-s */
What changed
Converted pound-force seconds to newton seconds. This is the line the Mars Climate Orbiter's ground software needed in 1999 and did not have.
See the whole diff →
Postcard
Post Card
Pompeii
August
hot

Mira, the bread is still in the oven. Carbonised, two thousand years, and you can read the baker's stamp on the crust. I thought about our kitchen and how nothing in it would last a week. Wish you were here, with a hat. Love, T.

Turn it over →
Ai Video
a short film · AI-made just for you
The Last Lighthouse Keeper
One job, automated in 1998, and the man who stayed.
Because you asked about everything, and this is what happens to the parts that get replaced.
▶︎ develop
Shower Thought
Every photograph of you is a picture of light that left your face and never came back.
Follow it →
Obituary
✝
R.I.P.
The Encyclopaedia, Printed
1768 – 2012
Epitaph
"Died of being right slightly too slowly."
Read the notice →
Calendar
January 202613 DAYS
Every full moon in 2026
SMTWTFS12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031
List Display
Kept by a patent clerk with a grudge
Every big idea had a second inventor who lost by weeks
The list
  1. 1Elisha Gray, telephone, filed the same day as Bell
  2. 2Alfred Russel Wallace, natural selection, sent by post
  3. 3Leibniz, calculus, published first and still lost
The other nine who lost →12
Receipt
Being alive, one day
Standard adult, resting, no refunds
Oxygen, 24 hrs550 L
Heartbeats100,000
Skin cells shed40 million
Blinks15,000
TOTAL1 day, non-transferable
Note
Thank you for your custom. Please come again tomorrow.
Read down the bill →14
Argue With Me
ARGUE WITH ME
Humanity's most important invention was the clock, not the wheel or the printing press.
This page
YOUR CORNER
Chord Chart
G
GDEmC
GUITAR · I–V–vi–IV
Math Notation
eiπ+1=0e^{i\pi} + 1 = 0
What it says
Euler's identity. Five numbers from five different corners of mathematics, and together they make nothing. Nobody expected them to know each other.
See it derived →
Standup Bit
Title
Everything
Premise
I learned a little about everything, so now I know nothing, professionally.
Setup

I can tell you why the sky is blue but not what my wife does.

Punchline
Turns out knowing a little is kind of a lot!
I'm the smartest man at every party and the only one nobody calls back.
The rest of the set →
Pie Chart
Dry air at sea level, by volume
What the air you are breathing is actually made of
Nitrogen · 78%
Oxygen · 21%
Argon · 1%
CO2 and everything else · 0%
See the breakdown →5
Voicemail
1 missed call
Voicemail
Dennis, your landlord's plumber
Returning your call about the noise
7:42 am
0:000:51
Transcription
“Yeah hi, it's Dennis, about the banging in the pipes. So that's called water hammer, it's not the pipes, it's the water stopping too fast when the valve shuts, like a train hitting a wall, and what you need is”
Press play
Menu
A cosmological bistro
Tonight's special, and every night's, eventually
Dish
The Heat Death of the Universe
everything, slowly, served at one uniform temperature
10^100 years
See the rest →8
Diary
Dear diary,Tuesday, late
Mood Dangerously capable
Entry
Fixed the toaster. Well. Fixed is strong. It toasts now, on one side, if you hold the lever down, but I did that with my hands and a spoon and I feel like I could rebuild a city.
Read the entry →
Fake Ad
From the makers of Sleep
DREAMS: Now Free With Every Night!
Content may not reflect your actual life. No refunds on nightmares.
See the fine print →
Snap Judgment
SHOOT THE FAKE ELEMENTS
LET THE REAL ONES PASS
▸ INSERT COIN
INSERT COIN →60
Recommendation
BRecommendation · Book
The pitch

the one book where a physicist explains the whole universe in order and you actually finish it, it's funny, it's short, nothing is dumbed down

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics — Carlo Rovelli

Why this one and not the fat ones →96
Legal Pad
Legal Pad · Notes from a failure investigationthurs, after site visit
what actually broke
To do
★it didn't fail at the weak point. it failed at the point everyone was SURE about
See the rest of the page →11
Fortune Cookie

You will learn one thing today that explain three thing from yesterday.

See it in full →
Calendar View
September 1752
SMTWTFS123456789101112131415161718192021
Note
Sep 14 — Wednesday 2 September 1752 was followed by Thursday 14 September. Britain was catching up with the Gregorian calendar. Nobody rioted about it, whatever the painting says.
See the missing days in context →
Number Line
NUMBER LINE0–100,000
Where human hearing sits, in hertz
2020,00045,000100,000
20–20,000 · human
A dog's ceiling is twice yours; a bat's is five times, and it uses it to see
Bar Chart
US Geological Survey, distribution of Earth's water
Share of all the planet's water, in percent
Oceans
Ice caps and glaciers
Groundwater
Lakes
Rivers
Insight
Every lake on Earth put together is a rounding error next to the ice; the water you can walk to is the water there is least of.
See the full breakdown →10
Explain Again
EXPLAIN AGAIN4 WAYS
The idea
Entropy
Ways to explain it
an analogya worked examplethe mechanismin one sentence
an analogy
A tidy room has one arrangement that counts as **tidy** and millions that count as messy. Leave it alone and it drifts toward messy, not because mess is a force but because there are more ways to be messy. [[Entropy]] is the count of those ways; the universe //drifts upward// in it for the same reason.
Poem
Rated Load
Free verse, three stanzas
Excerpt
The bridge was rated for the load it bore the day the engineer walked home. It was not rated for the years.
Read it whole →
Post It

ask WHY the thing keeps breaking before buying the 3rd one

What the note was stuck to →
Waffle
WAFFLE99 IN 100

Of every 100 species that have ever lived, this many are extinct

extinctstill here
Commonly cited estimate; Raup, Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck?, 1991
Movie Review
Reviewing the laws of physics as cinema
★★★★★
The Second Law
Verdict
A tense two-hander in which a cup of coffee cools and the universe wins, again.
Read the review →
Analogy
Analogy · Immunology
Unfamiliar
Vaccination
Is Like
→
Familiar
A fire drill
Why the rehearsal is the point →5 pairs
Recall Later
Question
Roughly what share of the air is argon?
3DAYS10DAYS30DAYS
Social Post
@firstprinciples_dad
Post
told my kid the sun is a star and she said 'then why isn't it out at night' and i have been sitting in the car for 20 minutes
4.1K likes · 612 replies
Open the thread →612
Chemical Structure
C8H10N4O2
Caffeine
Look at
The three methyl groups hanging off the rings; strip them and you have xanthine, which does nothing for you
Short Story
The Waiting List
Opening
The last repairman in the city had a waiting list nine years long, and on the morning this begins, the person at the top of it died.
Read on →
Calculator
CALCULATOR2 INPUTS
How much of your life you have slept, in years
Time asleepIN years
Age35
Hours per night7.50
Commitment
Read one Wikipedia article you did not choose
mtwtfss
10 min · 4 weeks
Field Guide
A field guide to people at partiesPlate 7
Common name
The Corrector
Scientific name

Homo emendans

Field Marks

Begins every sentence with 'well, actually'; plumage otherwise unremarkable.

Read the entry →6 marks
Misconception
Every parent, every winter
Common belief

You lose most of your body heat through your head.

Reality

The study behind it put soldiers in arctic suits with their heads bare, which makes it a study of hats.

See what is wrong with it →
Transcript
Board of Inquiry, Hollis Reservoir Collapse, day three
Transcript
WITNESS (engineer, retired):
I did not say the dam was safe. I said the dam was not currently failing. Those are different sentences and I was paid to know the difference.
Read the record →41
Remind Me When
AUG 2027
2
The longest total solar eclipse of the century
What to do then
Be in Luxor, Egypt, where totality lasts over six minutes
Source: NASA eclipse catalogue
REMIND ME
See it in full →
Write The Line
WRITE THE LINE
headline
Write the headline for the day the last fax machine is switched off.
YOUR LINE HERE
Ballot
Referendum on the Metric System, United States of America
Shall the United States adopt the metric system for all public purposes?
Yes
No
Only for soda bottles and medicine, as now
Field Diagram

The offside trap, one second before it works

Ask The Page
ASK THE PAGE
You have now read a little about everything. Ask about the one thing that still bothers you.
web
Video Embed
Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video)3:33
Video
Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video)
Watch the trap everyone has fallen into →
Negotiate
NEGOTIATE
A buyer who has read exactly one forum thread
You are selling a used car with a known gearbox noise to a buyer who has not noticed it yet.
“So I'll be honest, I've looked at a few of these, and the gearboxes are a known thing, right?”
Time Zones
TIME ZONESLIVE

Who is awake while you read this

Wilmington—
London—
Mumbai—
Tokyo—
Somewhere it is always three in the morning and someone is fixing something
Plot
PLOT
World population, 10,000 BCE to now
Population
Thought Experiment
Thought Experiment · Identity, with money attached
Theseus, insured
The question

A ship has every plank replaced over thirty years. Fine. Now someone collects the old planks and rebuilds the original. Which one gets the insurance payout when it sinks?

Sit with it →
Itinerary
ITINERARYForty-eight hours in the history of everything, on foot, in London
First
Natural History Museum, under the blue whale
Last
Greenwich, the meridian line
Days2
Stops9
Rough cost~£60
Price Tag
A gallon of regular petrol, United States
36¢
IN 1970
Actually costs today: $3.20
That is ×8.9 in 56 years
Adjusted for inflation the 1970 price is about three dollars; petrol has barely moved in fifty years
Traffic Sign
SOFT GROUND
ANY ARGUMENT YOU HAVE ONLY HEARD ONE SIDE OF
Sandbox Code
javascript
Code
let x = 0.5, r = 3.9;
for (let i = 0; i < 40; i++) {
  x = r * x * (1 - x);
  console.log(x.toFixed(3));
}
Run it, then change r — Change r from 2.9 to 3.5 to 3.9 and watch the population settle, then oscillate, then go to chaos. Nothing else in the code moves; that one number is the whole lesson.
Ad Image
NOW IN EVERY ROOMENTROPY: It Only Goes One Way!
Advertisement
An ad for the second law of thermodynamics, which needs no advertising.
Look at it properly →
Passport Stamps
PlymouthDec 1831
Salvador, BrazilFeb 1832
Tierra del FuegoDec 1832
GalápagosSep 1835
SydneyJan 1836
FalmouthOct 1836
Charles Darwin
HMS Beagle, 1831–1836
Five weeks in the Galápagos out of five years; most of the rest was seasickness
Annotated Image
ANNOTATED5 PARTS
The parts of a mechanical watch that are doing the thinking
12345
Ouat Story
The Kingdom That Counted
A fable about dashboards
Opening
Once upon a time there was a kingdom that measured everything, and so it knew exactly how much it was losing, every day, to the dragon it had decided not to see.
Read on →
Map Location
48.88° S, 123.39° W
Location
Point Nemo, the place in the Pacific farthest from any land. The nearest people are usually on the space station passing overhead, which is why agencies aim dead satellites here.
Open the map →
Joke
Setup

I finally understand quantum mechanics.

Punch

Or I don't. I haven't checked.

See it in full →
Warning
Warning
If a lithium battery pouch has gone puffy, it is not fine for now. The gas inside is the electrolyte breaking down, and a puncture or a hot car finishes the job.
How it actually goes wrong →
Critique This
CRITIQUE THIS
“Studies show that 90% of communication is nonverbal, which is why”
a claim
Screenplay
The Night Shift
INT. SERVER ROOM - 3:14 AM
Action
A single fan spins down. The hum changes pitch. MARA does not look up from the terminal.
Dialogue
MARA
Nothing's broken. It was just never meant to run this long.
Read the scene →
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